Financial markets recently discovered that German sneaker giant, Adidas,’ termination of its nine-year relationship with Ye, the hip-hop artist once known as Kanye West, cost the company over $1.3 billion, causing its share prices to plummet 11%. Adidas ended its fashion collaboration project with Ye, “Yeezy,” and cut ties with the rapper in October after he went on a series of deranged antisemitic tirades while boasting, “I can say antisemitic things, and Adidas can’t drop me. Now what?”
That’s precisely what Adidas is wondering now that it’s been left holding the shopping bag. The company is beset with heaps of Yeezy products that no one in their right mind would want to buy, as it faces the prospect of a yearly loss for the first time in three decades.
The Adidas–Ye affair is not only a catastrophe for the Bavarian-based conglomerate — it’s a cautionary tale. There are a few lessons brands can glean from this inglorious imbroglio.
For starters, multinational corporations, especially those with less-than-stellar histories, should not try to sweep the past under the rug. Adidas, for instance, was founded by Adolf and Rudolf Dassler, known initially as “Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory,” in Weimar Germany. Both brothers joined the Nazi Party in the early 1930s, and during World War II, the company supplied the Wehrmacht with military boots. In 1943, its factory was converted to manufacturing the panzerschreck, German anti-tank weapons, and even utilized Nazi-conscripted forced labor.
Adidas has completely whitewashed its role in empowering the Third Reich’s war machine, and there’s little to suggest it has acknowledged, let alone atoned for, its complicity in the totalitarian regime horrific atrocities. Its website does not mention its Nazi past, describing its history before 1949 as “only the start of our story.” Adidas hasn’t expressed any remorse for boosting Kanye’s career, either. All it managed to produce is an empty statement with no apology for enabling Ye’s xenophobia.
The irony of the similarities between Adidas’ controversial past and current predicament has not been lost on the public. Some high-profile figures on Twitter, like actor and comedian Michael Rapaport, insinuated that the company’s association with Nazi figures in its history might be why it was so slow to sever ties with Ye.
Admittedly, Adidas was unaware of the hate Ye harbored against The People of the Book when they signed him. But that’s no excuse. The rapper’s checkered past and history of jackassery should have been enough of a forewarning. Which brings us to the second takeaway from the Ye brouhaha: don’t knowingly associate with disreputable characters, and definitely don’t make them your brand ambassadors.
Adidas should have seen this coming. Since his emergence on the music scene, Ye has been an imbecilic charlatan showing signs of severe mental illness. When listening to the self-described “greatest artist of our generation” pontificate, one is reminded of a quote from Adam Sandler’s cult classic Billy Madison: “at no point in your rambling, incoherent response, were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.” After all, this is the man who claims that slavery was a choice, picks fights with presidents, considers himself a god, and experiences frequent psychotic episodes.
Some of these incidents happened after the Yeezy collaboration began, but that fails to explain why Adidas didn’t cut their losses and break away from Ye years ago. His ailing mental health is no excuse for his bigotry, and he only seemed to be deteriorating. His debut as an admirer of Adolf Hitler and a Nick Fuentes sycophant is the culmination of yearslong descent into madness.
What’s most puzzling about Adidas’ failure to cut the cord is its blatant hypocrisy. Even as claims of Ye’s antisemitic sentiments started to mount, the firm continued profiting off Yeezy merchandise while going all in on wokeness. In a spate of controversial ads, the brand undermined women’s sports, used 25 topless women to sell bras under the guise of “empowerment and diversity,” and proudly asserted that “there’s never been a more important time to stay woke.” It looks like the DEI agenda is consistent with Jew hatred. Message received. Good to know where the Adidas c-suite and leftwing activist class stand.
The final moral of the story is don’t try to be something you’re not. Corporate virtue signaling invariably fails because it’s logically incoherent. Firms trying to turn a profit aren’t in the business of saving the world, and that’s okay. That’s not why they exist. When companies lose sight of this and attempt to demonstrate their progressive piety, they inevitably fall short. A similar lack of self-awareness facilitated Adidas’ partnership with one of the chief exponents of antisemitism in America.